Monday, January 5, 2015

The Palestinian Authority is not a
country, but rather a group allied with a terrorist organization, and
for that reason its appeal to the International Criminal Court should be
rejected out of hand, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on
Thursday. Netanyahu’s comment came at the end of an interministerial
meeting he convened in Tel Aviv to discuss ways to combat the
Palestinian Authority’s signing of the Rome Statute and its intention of
bringing Israelis to the court on war crimes charges. “We expect the
International Criminal Court to completely reject the hypocritical act
by the Palestinian Authority, because the Palestinian Authority is not a
state. It is an entity in an alliance with a terrorist organization,
Hamas, that commits war crimes,” he said.

The ICC
gambit follows the Palestinian Authority’s failed effort at the United
Nations Security Council to obtain recognition as a state. That effort
resulted in part from the Obama administration’s malfeasance. Former
ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton writes:

A
firmer U.S. strategy might have prevented the dilemma from arising. The
White House’s opening diplomatic error was in sending strong signals to
the media and U.S. allies that 44, wary of offending Arab
countries, was reluctant to veto any resolution favoring a Palestinian
state. Secretary of State John Kerry took pains not to offer a view of
the resolution before it was taken up. Such equivocation was a mistake
because even this administration asserts that a permanent resolution of
the Israeli-Arab conflict requires direct negotiations and agreements
among the parties themselves.

No draft resolution contrary to
these precepts should be acceptable to the U.S., or worth wasting time
on in the diplomatic pursuit of a more moderate version. This American
view, advocated for years and backed by resolute threats to veto
anything that contradicted it, has previously dissuaded the Palestinians
from blue-smoke-and-mirror projects in the Security Council.

As
bad as the administration has been, however, responsibility for these
antics rests squarely with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud
Abbas. “Palestinians continue to be plagued by poor leadership. Being
unable to get nine votes in the Security Council; losing when they might
have won by delaying a month; energizing American opposition to their
actions—all to join an organization where they are actually far more at
risk than Israel,” observes former deputy national security adviser
Elliott Abrams. “The Fatah leadership in Ramallah is not brave enough to
face down Hamas and make peace, nor brave enough to face their own
people in an election. So they go for these gyrations in New York
instead, hoping to fool Palestinians into thinking these charades
constitute courageous action.”

The Palestinian Authority’s
repudiation of bilateral negotiations as the route to a peace settlement
leaves 44, who has sought at every turn to blame Israel for
the breakdown in the “peace process,” with egg on his face. Not only
could 44 not restrain allies such as France and Jordan from
proceeding on the U.N. Security Council proposal, but also the
Palestinian Authority is entirely unresponsive to his pleas to return to
the bargaining table, despite all his coddling.

All of this
leaves the Palestinian people no better off, and arguably worse. The
administration will be under pressure to limit support to the
Palestinian Authority and to exit from any international organization
that accepts the Palestinian Authority. Jonathan Schanzer of the
Foundation for Defense of Democracies notes: “The idea now is to sow
fear among Israelis that the threat of war crimes lingers. But it’s
still unclear whether the PA has a case, let alone standing.” The move
will have no effect on Israel nor improve the Palestinian Authority’s
bargaining position, he warns. “The Israelis are not cowering. The
Palestinian street is not impressed. The international community has
grown weary of these diplomatic stunts,” he says. “Ultimately, there is
little choice for the PA but to return to the tough slog of
negotiations.”

Abbas will not do this, however. The international theatrics are a
sign that he is unable to move forward to a positive way on behalf of
Palestinians, who will discover that none of his machinations bring them
any closer to a state. Michael Makovsky of the Jewish Institute for
National Security Affairs (JINSA), a pro-Israel group, observes that
Abbas “feels weak domestically versus Hamas and compelled to bolster his
hardline creds.” Makovsky speculates that Abbas might actually want
“to abet the Israeli right’s chances in March parliamentary elections,
because–he believes–it could lighten pressure on him to make hard
choices.” Whatever the thinking, “None of these inferences are
encouraging for a lasting deal and the US should pressure Abbas to
change course,” says Makovsky.

Frankly, this mess was entirely
foreseeable and inevitable once Obama began parroting the Palestinian
Authority’s line that it was ready for peace, that Israel had to be
bullied and that Israeli building stood in the way. How could the
Palestinian Authority be less intransigent than the president of the
United States? How could Abbas stop inciting violence and distance
himself from Hamas if the president kept saying that he was already a “partner for peace”?

44
came into office with the misguided belief that the United States had
been too close to Israel (which under 43 had
withdrawn from Gaza, lifted checkpoints and agreed not to expand the
footprint of settlements). Instead, 44 cozied up to the Palestinian
Authority, encouraging its worst instincts and making bilateral
negotiations more difficult. If nothing else, Abbas has demonstrated yet
again how disastrous the 44-Hillary Clinton-John Kerry Middle East
foreign policy has been. Indeed, it is hard to imagine how things could
get any worse — unless, of course, Iran gets the bomb.

wHoA!

h0t!

~hEy Y"all! DoN"t MiSs GsGf~!

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